


Not So Fast

by sunkelles



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Bart Allen is Artemis's annoying little brother, Bluepulse, Everyone is Queer, M/M, bluepulse week, in your face homophobe on tv, minor snaibsel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 06:46:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8194220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunkelles/pseuds/sunkelles
Summary: when Bart hears a homophobe on tv talking about how super heroes can't be gay, he devises an elaborate plan to drag his boyfriend to pride and prove them wrong. 
He wasn't really thinking about Blue Beetle's public image, or Jaime's feelings on the matter.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this was originally going to be more of a straight forward, cute fic. but then i remembered how jaime's public image must be after the invasion, and the nature of the fic changed a little. i hope you still like it though
> 
> also, you aren't going to convince me that keystone city kansas and central city missouri, which are supposed to be right across the border from each other, AREN'T supposed to be kansas city kansas and kansas city missouri. like HONESTLY

Bart can't really watch tv. He gets restless. He gets bored, and unless he's watching with someone else he really can't just sit down and enjoy it. He can sit through a show or two with Jay and Joan. He can get through a movie with Jaime, but he doesn’t enjoy it much. The shows move too slowly for him, and he needs to be _doing stuff._ Just sitting there and watching it makes him feel like he’s wasting his newfound freedom.

 

Sometimes he turns it on when he's cleaning, though. He actually kind of likes cleaning. It keeps him busy. It makes him feel like he’s doing something, and a few days after he did it the last time, it’s ready to be done again. It’s perpetual busy work, and he honestly appreciates it.

 

He doesn’t tell Joan that, though. He complains and she rolls her eyes and tells him to suck it up, and that she’s been cleaning this house at normal people speed for forty years. She buys him junk food for it, though. He appreciates that.

 

He’s dusting all of the flat, wooden surfaces in the house when he hears a nasal tenor voice say, “Super heroes can’t be gay.” _What the fuck?_ He drops the rag on the table, and speeds into the living room. An aging man with a prominent bald spot sits adjacent to Cat Grant in a large armchair.

“How can you be sure of that?” Cat Grant asks skeptically. She sounds as irritated as Bart is.

"It just isn't right," the man says, "Batman's not a homosexual. The Flash isn't a homosexual. None of the world's greatest heroes could be homosexuals. It isn’t natural.” And okay, Bart's vibrating in anger. The coffee table’s shaking, and he can the water splashing around in the glass on top of it. He hears footsteps.

“You’re saying because you support superheroes, none of them can be gay?” Grant asks.

"Dear, is there something wrong?" Joan asks. He turns around abruptly, but can’t make words come out of his mouth.

“No,” the man on tv says, strident voice filling the air, “I’m saying that God made the heroes to protect us, and that the gays are unnatural. Our super heroes are nothing like them.” Joan's lips shape an oh. Bart nods. Joan’s not a speedster like him, but she has fast reflexes and good instincts. She has her arms wrapped around him within seconds. He outgrew her a year ago, but she still hugs tight enough that it makes him feel safe and protected.

He hears Cat Grant tell her crew to cut to commercial.

“Thank god,” he mumbles. He doesn’t think he could listen to anymore of that right now. That had sort of made him feel like the sky was falling down around him. He knows that homophobia’s still a major problem, but he’s never had to think about it much. People had more pressing things to think about in the past, and he hasn't had to deal with it much here. His family has all been supportive. His friends have all been great, and he’s already in a good, stable relationship. He’s had it so good that he didn’t even really think about how much worse things could be. That’s not even the half of what people think about people like him in this day and age.

"That guy's an asshole, you know," Joan tells him. Bart laughs awkwardly, his chuckles kind of getting stuck in his throat.

"Yeah," he says. He finally breaks the hug. It felt too long and awkward to him, but that might have just been a speedster thing. He knows that his whole perception of time gets messed up sometimes, especially since he didn't even know how to tell time until he was thirteen.

“Most people don’t think that,” she says, “at least, you know _we_ don’t.” Bart smiles a little. He knows that his family supports him. He knows that the Reyes support Jaime and that Artemis’s mom supports her and that the whole Team supports all of them. But there are still a lot of people out there that are prejudiced and loud about it, and some of them are using heroes like him to justify it. That gives him an idea.

"Does Keystone have a pride parade?" Bart asks.

"I'm not really sure," Joan said, sounding a little embarrassed, "I never had a reason to keep track of that." He needs to find out, and he needs to find out now and start planning and figure out how to make this happen.

“I’mgonnagofindoutfinishcleaninglatersorry,” he spits out as he runs up to his room. He’s sure that Joan would be angrier if she weren’t so used to it.

 

Bart googles "Keystone City Pride" and comes up with nothing, with is disappointing. Then he tries Central City Pride, and is met with more options. Apparently, both sides of the metro area combine for one big pride festival in downtown Central City. Which is kind of cool, Bart supposes. He thinks that it would be cooler if it weren’t on the Missouri side. Everything is cooler when it’s not in Missouri.

Hypothetically, Bart could just call Jaime. But running over his house in El Paso only takes a minute, and it’s _way_ more fun to see him in person and talk and maybe kiss a little. Hearing Jaime’s voice is kinda crash, but getting to actually be around him is crasher. He decides to just run there, in civvies, because he couldn’t care less about secret identities and honestly? If he goes to Jaime’s house as Kid Flash, he’ll attract way more attention than as a blurry red spot that someone might have hallucinated.

 

He gets there two minutes later. He considers knocking on the door like a civilized person, but then remembers that Jaime doesn’t ever close his window so it’s just as easy to slide in there. He’s on the first floor, so Bart just has to step through and then he’s in his boyfriend’s bedroom.

 

Jaime is  _studying,_ because Jaime’s a _nerd._ He’s a cute nerd, though. He sets the calculator (which he doesn’t even need with a scarab that doubles as a supercomputer attached to his spine) down, and then looks up. He doesn’t look that surprised to see that Bart’s here.

"Did you really just sneak in through my window?" Jaime asks. Bart can’t tell if he’s asking because it’s so cliche or because Bart couldn’t be bothered to knock on the door.

"Yes?" Bart says, "I ran all the way from Kansas, I couldn't wait for you to open the door." Jaime rolls his eyes, and then looks back to his homework. His homework, which is apparently more interesting than Bart. Bart who has a totally crash idea that they have to talk about right now.

“Are you going to finish that?” Bart asks.

“Yes?” Jaime says, “I’ve got 25 questions left.” Bart rolls his eyes.

“Babe, I ran all the way from Kansas,” he says, “can it wait til I leave?”

“It only took you a minute to get here,” Jaime says, He sends Bart a teasing smile though. He’ll probably drag this out another minute and then be happy to talk.

“Still over nine hundred miles though,” Bart says, “which is more than in that song. I’m a better boyfriend than the guy from that song-”

“I”m finishing this problem,” Jaime asserts, “and _then_ we’ll talk, okay?” Bart huffs a little, but doesn’t argue. He taps his foot four hundred times while Jaime types in the numbers, double checks it, and then writes the number down on his paper.

“Are you done now?” Bart asks.

“I guess so,” Jaime says, with that mix of exasperation and excitement he always gets when Bart comes over to interrupt his previously scheduled boring, “what is it, cariño?”

“We’re going to _pride_ ,” he says with jazz hands.

“Like… gay pride?” Jaime asks.

“Yes, babe,” Bart says, “what other type is there?” Jaime shrugs.

“When’d you decide this?” he asks.

“Five minutes ago,’ he says, “some asshole on tv was saying that superheroes can’t be gay and I looked up pride dates and stuff. Central City’s is over the weekend.”  
  
“Alright,” Jaime says, “I’ll go.” That’s as close to enthusiastic consent as Bart’s going to get.

“Can I ask a random, semi-invasive question?” Bart asks. Jaime sends him a confused look but nods.

Bart says, “What’s your label? You know, like gay or bi or pan or junk. I need to know the color scheme.”

Jaime looks a little embarrassed at that, and says, “I dunno about my label. I've never liked a girl, but I think I might be able to? I'm not ruling it out."

"We're gonna go with bi then," Bart says. He has a _million_ ideas for bi. They’re way better than the ideas for gay or pan or any of the other labels, really.

"Don't I have a say in this?" Jaime asks.

"Of course," Bart says, "but you just said you didn't know. And come on, we could call you the Bi Beetle and paint you the bi colors. It would be the BEST"

"Wait," Jaime says, confusion on his face, "you want me to go as Blue?"

"Yes?" Bart says, "didn't I mention that? Some asshole on tv was saying that superheroes can't be gay. That's why we're going to pride. I'm gonna make a rainbow Kid Flash costume. It's gonna be _crash_."

"I can't go as Blue Beetle," Jaime says, letting out an uncomfortable little laugh, "it'll make people _more_ homophobic."

“What do you mean?” Bart asks.

“Two months on mode, remember? Blue Beetle was the public face of the Reach invasion,” Jaime says bitterly. Bart hasn’t forgotten about that, of course. That was his worst nightmare, but it never came to fruition. The worst that came of it was people cursing at Blue on missions.

“We’ll make it work,” Bart says. He has a plan, and it's going to work perfectly. They'll work through the kinks and everything will be alright. Jaime's just got to try. Maybe they can even show people that Blue’s alright, _great_ even. If he can realize that, the rest of the world can too.

"We _won’t_ , because I'm not doing that," he growls.

“Come on, babe,” Bart says.

“No,” Jaime says again, and he looks legitimately angry. Bart rolls his eyes, and he grabs Jaime by the arm. The beetle armor extends over his skin. The plasma cannon appears, and Jaime hits it angrily with his hand.

“Was that necessary?” Jaime asks the scarab. He takes a few deep breaths as the armor detracts.

“What happened?” Bart asks, sounding concerned. He’s never seen Jaime’s armor deploy in casual situations.

“The scarab felt _threatened_ , Bart,” he says, still sounding angry. 

“Threatened?”

“You were being pushy." 

“How was I being pushy? I just don’t get why you’re not alright with-”  
  
“You’re doing it right now,” Jaime interrupts, glaring at him. He opens his fucking math book again, and looks at the page instead of Bart.

“Jaime-”  
  
“Just get out, Bart,” Jaime says, “I can’t deal with this right now.” He punches some numbers into his calculator so loudly that it goes _ping._ Is it still taking the hint when someone’s made it glaringly obvious they don’t want you around? Either way, Bart speeds out of his room and runs back to Keystone. He’s in deep relationship shit.

 

Okay, so Bart fucked up. Royally. Breath-takingly. If there were an Olympic category for fucking up, Bart would have just taken the gold.

 

Alright so he knows he fucked up, and he's pretty sure that he should apologize. He's not really sure how to go about that though? Jaime seemed pretty done with him when he left. And the scarab, who had warmed to him enough that he didn’t constantly suggest Jaime kill him anymore, seemed to have decided yet again that killing Bart is the best option. He feels like all of those are major steps in the wrong direction.

 

He needs advice. He could ask Joan, or even Jay, but honestly, the only person Bart trusts with something like this is Artemis. He could run to Palo Alto almost as easily as he ran to El Paso. Bart knows this. He also knows that Artemis has a girlfriend that comes over frequently, and that she would be less alright with him just barging in unannounced. So Bart decided to call Artemis instead of running over to visit her. He dials her number, and the second she picks it up he starts speaking. 

“Hey Artemis thisisBartI’mhavingrelationshipproblems,” he says starts, speeding up out of nervousness. 

“What?” Artemis asks, “Bart?” Is that you?”

“Yes,” He says,

“I’m gonna need you to talk about a hundred times slower,” she says, “my speesterese is rusty.”

"You said I could call you if I ever needed anything," Bart says.

"Yes?" Artemis says.

“I need advice,” he says, “like, relationship advice.”

“Are you and Blue okay?” she asks, sounding a little confused. 

“Not totally,” Bart says, “I kind of fucked up. Well, I didn’t kind of fuck up. I fucked up big time.”

“What did you _do_?” she asks, both concern and interest in her voice.

“I kind of,” he says, “well, I demanded that we go to pride together, but like, as our secret IDs.” He was ridiculously pushy about it. 

“And?” Artemis asks, “why’s that a problem? Is he not out to his family or something?”

“Oh no,” Bart says, thankful that the Reyeses have been as cool about it as his own family, “it’s just that he’s Blue Beetle.”

“Oh,” Artemis says. Bart thinks he could hear a pin drop in that silence.

“You _did_ fuck up,” she finally says.

“Yeah,” Bart says awkwardly. 

“I just, I thought that we could make it work?” he says, “I really wanted to go to say fuck you to this asshole on tv that said superheroes couldn’t be gay, but I didn’t think about how it would affect him, you know?”

“Yeah,” Artemis says, “that happens sometimes.”

“You just have to apologize,” Artemis says, “explain why you did what you did and how you’re not gonna do it again. You aren’t gonna do that again, right?”

“Oh god, no,” Bart says. Artemis laughs, the gruff sound echoing on the other side of the line.

“Smart,” she says, laughing a little, “you learn faster than Wally did.” An awkward sort of silence sets in on the conversation, and Bart realizes that _one_ of them will have to keep the conversation going or one of them will hang up awkwardly and then they’ll never talk on the phone again and probably avoid talking to each other in person for a solid month.

"Will you and Zatanna go to pride, please?" He asks, “like, in costume. I really want someone to spite that dick.”

“Yeah, sure,” she says, “I’m sure she’ll love it. She actually has a rainbow bow tie.”

“That’s adorable,” Bart says, “can you get her to buy me one? I would _love_ that.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Artemis says sarcastically. 

“Gtg,” Bart says.

“Did you just use chatspeak out loud?” Artemis asks. Bart grins so wide he thinks she might have heard it in Palo Alto.

“Yes, tbh. Gottagobye,” he finishes. Then, he hangs up.

 

Okay, so Bart definitely needs to apologize asap. But he doesn't know if he should go or if he should just call him. He writes up a pros and cons list.

 

Pros of actually _going_ to see Jaime:

get to run

can’t just ignore the call

get to see Jaime

might yell

might slam the door in my face

definitely won’t be pleased to see me

might possibly break up with me on sight

 

He reads the list over, and realizes that it became a list of cons about halfway through. He sighs. Bart doesn’t think that he can handle making a list of pros for just calling him.

 

He could wait until tomorrow to go apologize. Jaime would probably be less angry. He might be more likely to talk to him, but then again, he might be _more_ angry. If Bart goes right now then Jaime will know that he figured out he fucked up immediately. That will make him look more sympathetic, and might gain him a few good boyfriend points back. He needs to start regaining good boyfriend points right now. 

 

He runs to El Paso and sneaks in through the window, which Jaime _still_ hasn’t closed. It’s going to get him robbed, eventually. Jaime’s curled up in bed, watching something on his laptop. Predictably, he’s also not wearing a shirt. Jaime looks up, and doesn’t even look surprised to see him. He doesn’t look happy either. His face has set in a glare as he removes his earbuds.

“Get out,” he says, “you lost your window privileges,” Which is honestly much lighter than what he was expecting. There was part of him that thought Jaime would break up with him on the spot.

“Look,” Bart says, “please, I came to apologize.” Jaime looks slightly more interested at that, or at least a little less hostile. He closes his laptop screen and sends him a hard look.

“Explain,” he says.

"I'm sorry," Bart says.

“Not an explanation,” Jaime says. Bart takes a deep breath, and before he can speak, Jaime does.

“No, we’re not killing him,” Jaime says. Bart giggles nervously. He forgot what it was like to be on the scarab’s shit list.

"I’m sorry, I just- I got carried away with my idea," he says, "I was so caught up in what I wanted that I didn’t think about how it affected you. And then I didn't listen to you when you explained why it wasn't okay and I was so pushy and I'll never do that againandI'msosososorry."

“Alright,” Jaime says. That- that’s not an answer at all. It doesn’t let Bart know if he accepted his apology, or if he still wants to date, or if he just acknowledges that Bart has in fact apologized and now never wants to speak to him again ever.

“Are we alright?” Bart asks cautiously, “do you still want to be my boyfriend?”

“I was mad,” Jaime says with a hint of a smile, “but I wasn’t _that_ mad, carino. I actually like you.”

“Oh shut up,” Jaime tells his back parasite. Bart normally doesn’t want to know what Khaji Da has said. Especially not right now, when he’s number one on the being’s hit list.

"Do you still want to go to pride, just as Bart and Jaime?" he asks cautiously. Bart thinks that it would be fun, and he thinks that Jaime would like it. But he's definitely not going to demand that he do it. He's learned his lesson there. The other boy grins a little.

"Yeah," Jaime says, "I'd like that.” 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i'll be deep in the cold, hard ground before i recognize missouri


End file.
